網頁

2014年10月11日 星期六

The Secret of Constructive Program

This
aspect of nonviolence is generally called a constructive program. In the long
term, a constructive program provides the glue that keeps movements together,
building on the spontaneous energy that may erupt in the face of some severe
injustice and preventing that energy from melting away when the injustice has
been addressed or the movement meets with unexpected resistance. These are
strategic advantages that rest on the fact that nonviolence, as a positive
force, lends itself even more natively to “cooperating with good” as King would
say, than to “noncooperating with evil,” though that, too, has its place.

Other
strategic advantages follow from this principle. For instance, working together
for an overriding goal makes for an effective and enduring bond among people. Constructive
work also can reassure the public, which may be frightened by even nonviolent
resistance to an established authority, and it can undermine a repressive
regime without provoking the reaction that confrontation does. Most
importantly, a well-developed constructive program builds the infrastructure
for a new society before the old society crumbles, preventing the emergence of
a power vacuum into which new repressive elements often rush…

Confrontational
nonviolence, or what I like to call “obstructive program,” can be very
effective, indeed dramatically so, but it requires that we maintain momentum
and group solidarity until an opportune moment arrives. It also requires that
we make progress without provoking undue hostility from our opponents and that
we demonstrate our underlying commitment to the well-being of all, so as to
leave the least possible legacy of bitterness, neither of which is always easy.
Finally, oppression operates on the false assumption that the oppressed are
helpless and dependent, but confrontational nonviolence does not always help to
convince ourselves, our people, and in time the oppressor that we can govern
and provide for ourselves….